Max covered the big story yesterday: The Royals traded for A’s pitcher Mitch Spence.

Anne Rogers covered it for MLB:

The Royals were interested in Spence ahead of the 2023 Rule 5 Draft, but the A’s scooped him up from the Yankees with the first pick. In ‘24, he posted a 4.58 ERA across 35 appearances (24 starts). Last season, Spence made 32 appearances (eight starts) and finished the season with a 5.10 ERA. Spence has had very low walk rates throughout his career — including 6.8% in his two big league seasons — and operates with five pitches, with his breaking balls getting quite a bit of swing and miss.

Spence’s experience in both the rotation and bullpen, as well as the two Minor League options he has remaining, were what made him a target for the Royals on Thursday morning after they learned he had been designated for assignment by the A’s.

Jaylon Thompson wrote about it for The Star:

“The main attraction is that he has been a major-league starter,” Picollo said. “He has starts in the major leagues and sometimes you look at guys like that, you know, if they were free agents, how would you view them? And with somebody that has the amount of starts and the options, he would be valued pretty high.”

MLBTR also has some tidbits. As does the Associated Press.

There are some weird little questions around this trade, like “why trade for a DFA guy” and “why give up someone with real upside like Causey”? But, at this point, if the Royals pitching braintrust wants a pitcher – I say let them cook. Not every move will work out, but they’ve earned some benefit of the doubt.

Speaking of The Star, they’ve ramped up their Royals coverage now that Spring Training is underway. Hold on. Let me just soak that sentence in. “Spring Training is underway!” Huzzah.

Where was I? Oh, right. Thompson talked to Michael Wacha about pitching in the World Baseball Classic.

“You know, talking to (Team USA head coach Mark) DeRosa and (Team USA pitching coach Andy) Pettitte, I got what they were expecting out of me. I was able to take that to (Royals pitching coach Brian) Sweeney and kind of see where that lined up with me. And it ended up being kind of right where I’m going to be here in camp to get ready for our regular season.”

Vahe Gregorian profiled the late, great Terrance Gore (RIP):

In those days and after they each went on to Kansas City, Hosmer reassured Gore and used humor to ease any stress he might feel. He’d tease him about whether crowds of 40,000 would make him nervous or ridiculously bluffed in poker games to lighten the mood. And then some.

“But all those little things we tried to do were unnecessary,” Hosmer said Wednesday. “Because Terrance, from that first time he went in to pinch-run, he was just absolutely fearless.”

There were some housekeeping transactions yesterday. These were guys who hadn’t accumulated much service time so they likely got near league minimum contracts:

Listicles are already in midseason form.

At ESPN, Alden Gonzalez lists “One player to watch on every team”:

Kansas City Royals: RF Jac Caglianone

Caglianone struggled in his first taste of the majors last year, slashing .157/.237/.295 in 232 plate appearances. It was also a lot to ask of him. The 2025 season represented Caglianone’s first full season of pro ball, which saw him advance through Double-A and Triple-A, land in the majors and sit out extended time because of a hamstring strain, all while learning right field.

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Now that he has had a chance to breathe, the Royals are expecting big things from their 23-year-old former first-round pick. They need it. The Royals are trying to win the AL Central and will have no chance of doing so if they repeat a year that saw them score the fifth-fewest runs in the majors. Their offseason moves were subtle, and so their biggest chance of improving offensively will come down to whether Caglianone can translate his elite power to the highest level.

Jordan Shusterman of Yahoo gives out AL Central offseason grades. The Royals got a B-.

Are you sensing an AL Central theme? Here’s another club with some contender-like qualities, but an offensive unit that severely lacks the depth to warrant a bullish forecast. The Royals’ outfield in particular has been problematically awful in recent seasons, even as Kansas City has returned to relevance in the AL. It’s no surprise then that the team made multiple moves this winter to try to address that shortcoming, signing bounce-back candidate Lane Thomas and acquiring unlikely rookie breakout Isaac Collins in a swap with Milwaukee…

Otherwise, the Royals didn’t do much. Extensions for breakout third baseman Maikel Garcia and franchise anchor Salvador Perez were both nice to see, but they don’t overshadow the complete lack of free-agent spending. Only the Nationals gave out less guaranteed money to major-league free agents this winter than Kansas City’s $6.15 million to Thomas and reliever Alex Lange. That’s disappointing considering the Royals’ recent willingness to occasionally splurge in the middle tier of free agency for guys such as Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha.

But the Royals did get better this winter. The outfield additions, plus a reliable lefty reliever in Strahm to backfill the loss of Zerpa, put this roster in position to compete in this mediocre division. It was an uninspiring but respectable winter for Kansas City.

We’re a little light in the blog department, but there are enough MLB or Royals-adjacent “official” stories to keep them company.

At ESPN, Jesse Rogers writes about some new rule changes.

The first is to combat base coaches leaving their boxes to steal pitches:

The issue came to a head before Game 7 of the World Series last year when both the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers were asked to keep their coaches in their boxes. Now, it will be enforced leaguewide by umpires… Coaches will first get a warning and then are subject to ejection if they don’t stay in their boxes.

MLB also released guidelines around the new automated ball-strike (ABS) system. For instance:

• A pitch may not be challenged if a position player is pitching.

We’ve got a couple of fun stories about former Royals.

By all accounts, White Sox GM and former Royals utility player Chris Getz has had a good offseason. That Yahoo article above gave Chicago a B+. But this little story is getting some Spring Training run. Speaking with the media, Getz repeatedly said that Luisangel Acuña, Ronald’s younger brother, was a switch-hitter. Only, he’s not:

It wasn’t the first miscue or probably the last for the affable, personable general manager, who is working to build a winner on the South Side of Chicago. But in mentioning new acquisition Luisangel Acuña as a switch-hitter on a number of different occasions, including Monday’s Spring Training opening media session, he created some unwanted social media buzz on Wednesday…

“So I probably have been getting carried away describing his versatility,” Getz joked. “He can play every position on the field. Why does it have to stop there? I called Luisangel and told him that even though he’s just right-handed, we still love him.”

This one’s worth reading in its entirety. You should probably check out this video as well. But the long and short is that there’s a dad who may have made “Kyle Farnsworth” the most searched non-Ohtani pitcher in the state of Iowa in 2025.

Finally, at The Athletic ($), Katie Woo penned an interesting read about the end of the “Harvard of umpire schools”. It’s worth a read if you can get to it.

The Wendelstedt Umpire School has shuttered its doors. A graduation ceremony last week honored the last class of umpires from an institution that dates to 1938. After nearly a century, the most famous umpire school in the country is getting the heave-ho… To document the end of the line, The Athletic spent the final few days at umpire camp and delved into why the school is giving way to a new method of MLB-sanctioned training.

…One student asks Hunter Wendelstedt about his most memorable game. He had no shortage of options: He’s umpired All-Star games, the World Series, and even shared the field with his father, becoming the first father-son duo to umpire a major-league baseball game together.

Still, he couldn’t resist revealing the “coolest” moment of his career: Being the third-base umpire when Bartolo Colon hit his first (and only) career home run.

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“It was just incredible,” Wendelstedt marveled. The room erupted in laughter.

Onto blogs. Our main story tonight is from Kevin O’Brien, asking if Nick Castellanos would fit in Kansas City:

Castellanos’ bat is so key to his value as an MLB player, but unfortunately, he’s trending in the wrong direction in some key categories. Two of those categories are hard-hit rate and bat speed.

In terms of hard-hit rate, he posted a 36.1% hard-hit rate last season, which ranked in the 16th percentile. That was worse than his average exit velocity (23rd percentile), max exit velocity (33rd percentile), and barrel percentage (36th percentile). While Castellanos did a good job of launching the ball (92nd percentile LA Sweet-Spot%) and swinging at pitches in the zone (99th percentile), his poor performance in other Statcast metrics weighed down his overall production. That is evident in his lackluster average (.250), OPS (.694), ISO (.150), and wRC+ (90) last season.

Hard-hit rate sticks out the most, however, because if Castellanos isn’t hitting the ball hard, it doesn’t matter how well he launches the ball. Well-launched, but soft-hit balls will just become flyouts, especially at Kauffman Stadium, even with the new dimensions (which will still be more pitcher-friendly than Citizens Bank Ballpark, which was the fourth most HR-friendly ballpark in baseball last year, according to Statcast park factors).

Life has a lot of little nuts and bolts to it. Sometimes they’re boring. Sometimes they’re more fun. A couple of years ago, I talked about the email I have received while on the masthead. I think it’s time to do that again. Here’s the quick primer:

Remember back in January (of course, nobody does) when I did an OT on “what it’s like to write a Rumblings”. This time I’ll give a little peek under the covers of what it’s like to be on the Masthead. No, not in the way that like Max or Matt or Jeremy do – that would require like real work and stuff. I just mean the stuff that comes into my inbox because I have an email address that advertisers scrape off the masthead.

Spoiler: I have an email account that I use specifically for Royals Review.

Disclaimer: This is a bit fictionalized because I want to protect the innocent and not so innocent. Oh, and to not get us sued. I did leave some of the bad grammar in for humorous effect, but, in those cases, the other wording has been changed. This is for bad comedy and even worse educational purposes only.

And this is definitely not just me killing two birds with one stone: cleaning out my inbox while writing this week’s OT. Looking at the dates, it’s been about a year since I cleaned out this account. There are about 300-ish unread messages. So let’s get to work.

Where to start with those 300? Whoops – I just noticed that 300 doesn’t include the 261 I’ve received from David Lesky, Craig Brown, and IBWAA. Those aren’t deleted, but they’re already filtered into a handy “Royals Review” folder. I mark them all as “Read” and now I’m halfway done, right?

Back to the inbox. What the heck? I don’t even remember subscribing to that Substack. Or that one. And that one, I subscribed to, but I don’t need an email every day. Now we’re down to 178 messages. Much more manageable. Within 5 minutes, I’m 2/3rds done. I’ve tripled my productivity!

Next up, Grammarly. Grammarly, Grammarly, Grammarly. I know, my writing looks like it’d get 1000% human on every AI checker. But I do actually look at Grammarly’s suggestions. It’s just that sometimes I choose not to take them. Also, I’m a very accomplished misspeller and grammar butcher. I’m the mouse they have to keep making better traps to catch.

But did you really need to spam me 102 times over the last year? Is it really my last chance to get Grammarly Pro for 50% off… when you sent that exact offer 48(!!) times over the past year? Puzzlingly, some were filtered into a folder and marked as “read” while others were not. Time to unsubscribe and update some filters.

Grammarly has some cute little features. Here’s one of my weekly reports from last month:

Grammarly writing streak: 4 weeks

Productivity: Grammarly analyzed 45,476 words. You were more productive than 89% of Grammarly users.

Accuracy: Grammarly showed you 158 alerts. You were more accurate than 73% of Grammarly users.

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Vocabulary: You used 2,718 unique words. That’s more unique words than 83% of other Grammarly users.

And that just includes what I write online. Yikes.

Salesforce? Why am I getting spam from Salesforce? Oh, here we go: “Slack from Salesforce”. We have a little Slack that Max uses to dish out writing assignments. It decided to randomly subscribe me to their spam letter so I get schlock like “Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025” and “22 ways to automate your most tedious tasks”. These are all getting automated into the trash.

Another one that I get quite a bit from is MLB Network PR. Honestly, I don’t remember signing up for it, but it’s mildly useful. I get emails like “Witt Jr. Ranked on MLB Now’s ‘Top 10 Shortstops Right Now’”. Ok, cool. Filed.

There are still some mailing lists I can wipe out 5 and 10 at a time.

There’s a sporting goods company that sends me press releases. I guess I could see how it might merit a mention on Royals Review. But some of them are like: “COMPANY NAME Announces Renewal of Five-Year Credit Facility”? Riveting stuff. But then when I click the link to unsubscribe, this company has the gall to make me do a captcha. Seriously? I know somewhere you can stuff your traffic lights and bicycles.

However my email got in the mix for that, it was also signed me up for some PR newsletter with the slogan: “The most relevant press releases of the day — don’t miss them.” Did you know that “COMPANY Awards a Certification to OTHER COMPANY, a Leading sports rehabilitation brand: No.1 Global Sales in Mid-to-High-End Massage Guns for Three Consecutive Years”? Didn’t care either, did you?

I grab the other low-hanging fruit, and I’m down to 60. This is where I curse Gmail for not being able to sort by sender or title. But now it gets a lot harder.

Oh, hold on. I spot check a couple of the random PR emails in there. When I look at the bottom, many of them say they came from the same PR newsletter company. It’s a really weird mix of customers, too. Most are major companies I’ve heard of: Canon, TransUnion, Rally House, Gorilla Glue, Boulevard Brewing, and even some silly ad campaign where car review company Edmunds “teams up” with Tommy Edman of the Dodgers. No, I don’t want a pickleball paddle – what does that even have to do with baseball? My favorite of all of these is a company trying to sell a Pope Leo XIV baseball jersey.

We’re down to just ten emails. Let’s see what’s left.

Beyond that, you get a surprisingly high amount of paid content offers. What I mean by that is we get cold call emails that say they’d love to “guest post” on RR. I believe this translates to “we want to post an ad on your platform, disguised as a news or analysis article”. It usually looks pretty spammy, the English isn’t great, and it’s the type of thing where you wonder just how legitimate the site is that they want to link back to.

One asks for our story publishing fee and “whether your site accommodates links related to the casino industry”. Another one assures me that Royals Review is a “Top 100 Baseball Blog” at their blog site. All I have to do is create an account on their website and… never mind. I’m not doing that for a number of reasons. Another wants to set me straight about the price of cable vs streaming.

Yet another wants me to link to their power provider website. I guess there’s a little more to this story. Apparently, someone in 2025 found a 2021 Rumblings and wanted to follow up. Never mind that this wasn’t my finest hour. This was after the Cancun Cruz winter storm that had left us without power for 30 hours and without water for nearly a week. I outlined how the unprecdented failing of the Texas power grid was a mix of incompetence, malice, and grift. You know, the one where Abbott blamed wind turbines (before he had to walk it back) and Ted Cruz left the state (before blaming the trip on his daughter).

I received a couple of offers to do book reviews. Honestly, these feel the most legit. Someone offers to send you an advance copy of the book in exchange for a review/publicity. Seems totally fair. I wish I could commit the time to do these, but I know I won’t so it’s not fair to take them up on the offer.

I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that. My first “writing gig” was doing video game reviews for a long-defunct website that you’ve never heard of. We didn’t get a lot of games from major publishers. It’s not like Nintendo needed more press for whatever Mario or Zelda game just came out. But many smaller companies were happy for any press. Of course, you have to be fair. If you spent all of your time savaging games, even the smallest publisher would never send the site games to review. Why waste their few bucks shipping to get bad publicity?

And with that, my inbox is clean and we’re, once again, over 3000 words of the week. Yay!

We’ve revisited Project X Zone for the 3DS a few times. Probably more than it deserves. But I enjoy the soundtrack.

Here’s our post history with the game:

Today, we’re going with the track “Rapid Storm”.